July 11, 2010

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White House senior adviser David Axelrod struggled Sunday to argue that President Barack Obama's recess appointment of Dr. Don Berwick to run the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs was needed because of a pattern of Republican intransigence toward Obama nominees.

"We've had nominees who have had hearings and then have waited months and months and months for a vote," Axelrod told ABC's Jake Tapper on "This Week." "The Republican Party has made it a policy in the United States Senate to hold up," Axelrod continued, before Tapper jumped in.

"I grant you all of that - I grant you all of that, but that's not Berwick," Tapper said, noting that Berwick hadn't even had his confirmation hearing after being nominated a little more than two months ago.

"This position is too important. In the midst of implementing health reform, it is too important to allow that kind of game-playing to go on. And the president needed to act, put someone in place," Axelrod insisted.

In a wide shot, Tapper seemed to have donned a highly skeptical expression. "You didn't want to have a hearing, because [Berwick] was going to be attacked," he insisted.

Axelrod eventually conceded that the administration was trying to take the issue out of the political fray. "What we don't want in this midst of an election is to let this be drawn out in a long kind of political circus while the job that needs to be done is not getting done or not getting done with the man who should be doing it," the Obama adviser said.

Opponents of Berwick have accused him of favoring rationing and an approach similar to Britain's National Health Service.

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Obama continues to show his totalitarian side, and it is scaring not only Republicans, but also independents. That Obama Democrats continue to support Obama's deceptions, attempts to mislead and lies shows how little intellectual integrity there is on the left.
Axlerod allows and even encourages Obama to use him as a carrier of the president's lies. That the Axlerods of the world are so addicted to power that they'll allow the powerful to misuse them is the saddest and biggest untold story of the Obama administration.

"Political circus" is code for...we didn't want anyone to know what Berwick really thought and what he would be trying to do to Medicare and Medicaid. The most honest and open administration evah...I think not.